The McDonaldization of UX

The Dawning of the “McUX” Designer

Photo by Simon Ray on Unsplash

I’m on the phone for a thirty-minute interview with a corporation that has a specialty division in healthcare UX. The UX director on the other end of the line starts by telling me how much out of every dollar of a hospital’s profits a hospital actually gets to keep. It’s a practiced and well-rehearsed spiel she effortlessly runs through. She continues to tell me how this position, the position I am interviewing for, will help hospitals keep more of every dollar they make.

Just what I always dreamed of — making a large corporation more money.

It only took her less than two minutes to lose me. There was no discussion concerning the impact I would make on patients lives or the lives of clinicians. She asked all the right questions about my process, background and work history. She proceeded to describe the same position I work at in nearly every corporation — design systems, agile, wireframes and all the usual suspects. But it was the same shit, same position, different corporation. I pictured myself toiling away to make hospitals and this corporation more money while patients continued to shoulder the high cost of healthcare. It felt a little bit like Bizarro Robin Hood.

I wasn’t interested.